Frederick Sands was born in Liverpool on 18 January 1916, the eldest of three children. His father was a window dresser for a local tobacco company, but had a fundamental love of art and encouraged his son to paint and to look at the work of the masters whose paintings and drawings were on regular view at the Walker Art Gallery and the Lady Lever Gallery in Liverpool.
He was offered a job in Jersey by his great aunt and uncle, Jessie and Fred Laurens, who had their own photographic studio in York Street, St Helier. In 1932 he arrived to learn the business and soon showed a natural aptitude for it. It was here that he met Mabel Handford who was later to become his wife. Sands and Mabel evacuated to England during World War II, but returned to Jersey in 1945, and their only son, Christopher, was born in 1948.
Sands was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 1952 and regularly exhibited with them in their annual exhibition. He was head of art at De La Salle school until 1983.
His work is in many collections throughout the world, including the British Government's and one of his watercolours was included in a book of paintings given to Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on occasion of their wedding by members of the Royal Institute.
He painted in oil and watercolour, but it is probably for his watercolour studies of rocks and rock pools in St Ouen's Bay on Jersey's west coast that he will be best remembered.
Partly abstract, partly impressionistic - A Sands study of St Ouen's Bay with La Rocco Tower in the background
La Moye
Green Island
L'Etacq
La Pulente
La Rocco
1978
1978
